My year, my brain and water the seeds (It's kinda long, sorry.)

In the intro to this blog, I said it has been a "trippy year". Trippy is the nicest word I could thing of. In fact it's been a personally tragic year in many ways. Whoa is me, let me count the ways. (That's my own goofy way of saying here's the shit from this year.) I considered different ways to make this easy reading and hope this method works for you.

January - Brain seizures make me pass out. Multiple test to discover why, at no small cost I might add. Diagnosis: Dude we have no idea. We'll have to wait for it to happen again. That'll be X$$. Thanks for nothin' doc. Begin treatment on my eyes to improve my vision, which in fact makes my eyes worse. Ugh!

February - Resigned from my job here in CoMO to move to KC to be with the woman I loved and planned to marry. Eyes blurry, very blurry!

March - Woman of my dreams dumps me. WTF!! Eyes still crazy.

April - June Put my house on the market. Just gotta get out of Columbia! Some students loose their minds and accuse me of improper conduct. I am exonerated of each false claim. But Damn can I get an administrator to say "stop lying on your teacher. Shut up and get out of my office." I know they want an environment of in which kids feel safe, but dang, what about the teachers, don't WE need to feel safe?! Truly, too many times, schools have become a place of the inmates running the asylum. So, I am not disappointed to have resigned on that level.

May - Mother is diagnosed with Colon Cancer. Simultaneously, I am offered a teacher job in Taiwan. Cool! but awkward.

June - Recruited for a job in KC. Again, Cool! Good money and I can stay in the U.S. But the process takes forever and in September the job is given to someone else. Ugh!

August - Mother has surgery to remove tumor. 2 weeks later after biopsy the diagnosis is changed to Malignant Melanoma that has gone to her internal organs. There's no treatment. She's dying. :(

(It's important to mention here, I'm Black and never paid much attention to the sun and skin diseases. Thought melanoma was a "white thing". So if you're reading this, please wear sunscreen. I do now!)

October - No job or prospects that I can see clearly. The best prospects for me to teach English as a Second Language are out of the country... Asia or the Middle East. BUT... My house still hasn't sold and my mother is dying. So........?

Now that I've said all that... I will not blame my situation on the circustances of life. Though I have on occaision been accused of being overly negative. (I simply point out the facts are the facts.) I think of myself as being realistic as opposed to being pesimistic. Ultimately when the dust clears, I'm pragmatic, saying "OK..... now what?" I pick myself up and stumble on.

Lately I find myself somewhere between being afraid to ask what else can go wrong and waiting for the next shoe to drop. I've been stuck here a while and if one more person says "things happen for a reason" I'm going to scream. Maybe it does..... but maybe just maybe things happen to everybody and it's just my turn.

I find myself deeply uncertain of what I'm doing. That's no revelation. But not knowing where I was going... that's a new frustration. In the past when stuff happened, I usually had a sense of direction and just needed to figure out how to get over or around the obstacle. A more appropriate question my be "Where's D headed?" rather than, Where in the World is D?.

But then the other day I had a thought. A revelation of sorts. "Bloom where you're planted." I had heard it a zillion times in my life, but never seemed to apply until now. I would love to bloom right here.

I just wish I knew what seeds were in the ground.